NCJ Number
172097
Journal
Homicide Studies Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Dated: (February 1997) Pages: 61-71
Date Published
1997
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This article examines the risk of uxoricide for women with children sired by previous partners.
Abstract
Information about uxoricides in one Canadian city between 1974 and 1995 was extracted from media reports. Among the slain women who were mothers of coresident minor children, half had children sired by former partners, compared to 7 percent of comparable mothers in the population at large, an odds ratio of 12.7. This study provides the first demonstration that the presence of children from prior unions is associated with elevated spousal homicide risk. This risk factor is likely to be widespread but was not previously demonstrated because homicide archives typically lack relevant information. Female-initiated separation was apparently a motivational factor in more than half of all uxoricides. Male sexual proprietariness, aroused either by women's efforts to leave unsatisfactory marriages or by adulterous or potentially adulterous interactions with other males, was by far the leading ostensible motivational factor in violence against wives, especially lethal violence. Media reports can be informative with respect to the timing and circumstances of uxoricide risk in relation to marital dissolution. Table, note, references